Even as nursing home cases and deaths related to COVID-19 are declining, a recent analysis finds the virus is still wreaking havoc in long-term care settings.
During a four-week time span, from mid-December 2023 to mid-January 2024, residents experienced the highest rates of deaths as well as cases of the virus among staff and residents compared to the same period a year prior, an AARP analysis revealed.
About 3,000 nursing home residents died from COVID-19 between mid-November 2023 and mid-February 2024, the analysis showed. During that time, there were about 50,000 residents and about 40,000 staff workers who had COVID-19.
Data also showed that vaccination rates with the most recent COVID-19 booster were lower among residents and staff, compared to previous vaccination rates.
“It just shows that this is an ongoing concern in facilities. There is a seasonal pattern, but it’s by no means going away,” Ari Houser, a senior methods adviser at AARP and coauthor of the analysis, said.
Still, resident cases and deaths from COVID-19 are going down as the nation enters into spring this year, the data indicated.
Since the pandemic began, more than 2 million people living in nursing homes have contracted COVID-19 and about 188,000 of them have died from it, the AARP analysis said.
Data from the federal government, which largely forms the basis of the AARP data, also showed that there have been about 1.9 million cases of COVID-19 among staff in the past four years.
There are about 1.2 million older adults living in nursing homes in the country. The individuals are often more frail than the general population, Houser noted.
“They have this combination of age, vulnerability and exposure that’s really unmatched,” he said.
AARP maintains an ongoing analysis of COVID-19 cases and deaths, which is conducted by the AARP Public Policy Institute and the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University in Ohio. Most of the data comes from the Nursing Home COVID-19 Public File from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The majority of nursing homes in America are federally certified, so they have to give data to the government on a weekly basis.
